GREENZONE - Review

Set in 2003 during the invasion of Baghdad, Green Zone is the story of the US search for Saddam’s Weapons of Mass Destruction and the political cover-ups that surfaced when the weapons didn’t.
Based on the book “Imperial Life in the Emerald City” by Rajiv Chandrasekaran and directed by Paul Greengrass of Bourne fame and the September 11 film Flight 97, GZ is as much political thriller as cracking actioner.
The Green Zone of the title refers to the area of Baghdad bordered and controlled by US forces, where VIPs, journos, high ranking military officers and civilian contractors can sip lemonade and shoot pool in between all the combat missions and air strikes, all in relative comfort and safety.
Unlike many films in the plethora that cover this conflict, GZ depicts with great effect the scale of the chaos and frustrations for the civilian Iraqi citizens. The citizens that were going about their every day lives before all hell broke loose and whom now can not even have access to drinking water.
The film discards the cut and dried patriotic heroism of America for a more real world rendition of a secret war of deception, double dealing and hidden agendas.
The action is superbly crafted and almost underplayed against the development of the central story itself, and it is all skillfully joined together by Matt Damon as Chief Warrant Officer Miller, the soldier who begins searching for weapons, but finds himself searching for a truth that those in power don’t want found.
In support are Jason Isaacs as the gung ho Briggs and Amy Ryan as Wall Street Journal reporter Lawrie Dayne. The computer generated and enhanced backgrounds’ are smooth and give depth to the settings making us feel we are right there in Baghdad, (the film is actually shot in Morocco, Spain and England) the production shoot matching perfectly to all the media film stock we have seen on the news for the last few years; the authenticity is truly engaging.
The finale in the alleys of Baghdad is fraught with tension and a fast pace, leaving the viewer feeling that they too, have just been running along side Damon for the last five blocks, and falls in somewhere between The Bourne Ultimatum and Black Hawk Down.
However, it is The character of Freddie, (played with real emotion and pathos by ) the Baghdad citizen whom tries to assist Chief Miller in his task, that is perhaps one of the best cinematic representations of the face of the Iraqi people and their plight, and it is he who gets one of the most significant lines in the film, directed at Miller in the aftermath of a pivotal gun battle; “It is not for you to decide what happens here...”
It is no longer so much a Green Zone, but a grey one.